


As the Canary Flies

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Strex, Strexcorp, dripping, listen to the soothing sounds of the water, look around you - Freeform, look inside you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-half realized fic idea, not to be continued</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cecil sometimes feels like he has not been outside of the studio for years and years, or maybe ever. Now is one of them, as the eerie, yellow-masked faces of the black-suited soldiers circle him, shadowed hands reaching out through the dark of the room to test the strength of the straps they used to bind him to his desk. 

The strap that is pushing his face into the table would usually be used to secure the mike. Instead, it's lying on its side near his lips, bracketed by his shaking fists, which are white-knuckled with fear and anger. Cecil understands what they are doing and why, but it's no less humiliating or terrifying. The two soldiers' faces hover on the periphery of his field of vision like yellow moons in a dark and starless sky. 

It's hard to say what is happening to him; he can't see anything, and shortly after they ripped the mike out of its usual joist and strapped him in its place they pushed up the sleeve of his dress shirt on his right arm, gently cleaned the skin at the inside of his elbow with stringent smelling alcohol, and stabbed an intravenous needle into him. While he grit his teeth and growled, two hands held him in place while a third taped the needle down so it wouldn't jostle out and make a bubble under his skin. When they were done they turned up the flow from the hanging bag of whatever-it-is, and a cool feeling of listlessness began to spread rapidly through his body.

He is aware of the sound of the dripping, can feel the reverberations of his breath amplified through the microphone's still-live feed, ragged but slow, nervous but paralyzed. Time is slowing down. His thoughts are slowing down. His hands start to relax like timeworn books whose covers sit off-kilter, so much loose leather wrapped ineffectively around their pulpy innards, forgotten and broken. It feels as though his mind is adrift on a glassy river, and he is quite certain that he couldn't lift his head even if it wasn't bound to the desk. 

A man enters the room. A man who is non-descript, and hard to look at, save his familiar obsidian eyes and his wretched, unhappy face. His voice is a shadow in the dark, lingering and creeping through the air like dread on Cecil's spine. 

//Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!// 

This man is carrying a briefcase, which he lays on the desk before Cecil's eyes. When he opens it, there are several tools inside. Dentist's tools. A mirror, and picks to clean with, little sharp tools to cut away at plaque. A scalpel. 

Surgical thread.

A needle. 

//Good evening, you lovely people of Night Vale! Yes, the sun has gone down for the day in Night Vale, and Strexcorp is here to liven up the night! Just now, it's time to bring you a soothing, twelve hour broadcast of the deep, comforting quiet that you find in moments of pure existential crisis. Listeners, if you're out there-- and I'm sure you are!-- I want you to have the most pleasant, beautiful of days tomorrow, so be sure to cuddle up and get some well-earned rest!//

Cecil can feel the emotion that he knows is correct, the crawling, ever-burgeoning panic that should come of being threatened with such tools of torture. Around that feeling, though, is a thick, cold bubble of calm that is pouring into him and around him from the intravenous drip, and he can't muster up more than a whimper. 

//Goodnight, friends! We'll play again come morning. Goodnight!//


	2. Chapter 2

Carlos never has time for the radio. He leaves it off most days, because Cecil is-- while very likeable-- the kind of person who will repeat whatever stories he told that morning when he gets home, so very quickly Carlos came to understand that he would get a rehash of whatever the show had covered if he was patient and waited until dinner. 

This is why Carlos is unaware that something is wrong in the realm of Community Radio until dinnertime rolls around, and Cecil still hasn't responded to Carlos's invitation to join him for the meal. Cecil is, if nothing else, excessively communicative and usually punctual. Carlos wonders what is wrong, and so he turns on the radio. 

He hears the breath of someone sleeping, long and slow. The sound is a soothing, rhythmic balm, and keeps him company as he begins to compose a longer text message to send to Cecil. 

There are still tests to run on the sample he'd collected from the latest infestation of bookworms in town, so he leaves the broadcast on, setting his phone out so it will be easy to reach and to see if it lights up with an answer. Better to work quickly when it comes to live bookworms; the whole room has a thick, oily, stink of fish to it and Carlos's gas mask can't quite protect him from that. His face is damp with sweat as he works, peering through the microscope at the peculiar cellular structure of his subjects of interest. Bookworms are not like other multicellular beings, per-se. Their cells seem to be more akin to the molecular structure of a slice of copper than a living creature, and though they clearly are still alive, they move sluggishly, wanting for a food source. His first thought is to run electricity through them, see if they serve as conductors, in the way that metals do. 

Over the broadcast, a troubling moan begins; and it sounds familiar, but disjointed, almost refracted, as if someone were getting creative with sound equipment over at the station. It's only a little sound, and then it fades back into the measured breathing of someone who must, Carlos thinks, be asleep. Beneath that he can hear dripping, an irregular but pleasant counterpoint. He wonders if this is a meditation aid for those who summon things with their bloodstone circles for dinner, rather than cooking. 

Carlos's phone does not light up to show that Cecil has texted or emailed back. He checks it anyway, just in case. No missed calls. 

He returns to his study of the book worms. Electric current, while not fatal, does not seem to affect them very much. That's well and good, as Carlos had a suspicion that might be the case. So, instead, he tears out a page from one of the several scientific journals that started arriving for him shortly after Cecil began announcing his presence on-air. One of the perks of Cecil's infatuation with him, early on, was the sudden addition of these resources to his repertoire. He hadn't had the money to spare himself, but they come readily and as if paid for well in advance. Carlos doesn't know who to thank for the subscriptions, but he really is grateful for them all the same. The journals deal with subjects of every kind, are generally available online, and in reality would be superfluous, save that they provide an excellent source of the written word to avoid the use of the forbidden utensils, such as the pen. 

Well, and in this highly esoteric situation they do provide a variable with which to test his theory about the bookworms, which is pretty nice. 

When he feeds the page to the living sample bookworm, Carlos' eyes are glued to the microscope and he is startled to watch the cells seem to become fully functional-- fully active and alive and energized-- by the consumption of the page. He makes an embarrassing sound of triumph, and misses the very faint sound of someone saying, "...no, not--"

Cecil never does text. Carlos, unfortunately, has made a breakthrough in handling the bookworm population if not wiping them out entirely, and so he doesn't notice until morning.

The children of the Night Vale public school system seem very grateful when he arrives on campus armed with a ten-gallon jug strapped to his back, a quickly assembled motor has been attached, and he's carrying the hose-nozzle in ready-stance to eradicate any bookworms he might see. 

When he returns home, there is no message at all. He falls asleep to the rising sun, and wonders if Cecil had already eaten or something, or maybe his phone isn't getting good reception right now.


End file.
